Residents Gear Up For Skeeter Wars

Cheryl Bailey was on a mission last week at an east Orlando Target store to find ingredients for her homemade mosquito spray.

Her biggest motivation: to protect the health of her 3-year-old son, Arttie.

"When he gets bitten by a mosquito, he swells up like a balloon. You'd think maybe a bee would've bitten him," said Bailey, 35.

Bailey and other Central Florida residents are worried about the surge in mosquitoes that has led to an encephalitis alert in the Panhandle. Customers are flocking to stores in search of mosquito sprays, foggers, torches and anything else that might fight the bothersome bug.

Citronella candles and torches have been all but flying off the shelves. The Home Depot on East Colonial Drive, for example, is selling more than 75 of the candles each day.

"It's bad. You walk outside and [the mosquitoes] just merge," Jolie Spelman said as she picked up yet another citronella candle at Target to put outside her house.

Spelman also was considering the purchase of concentrated yard spray repellent to apply around her Orlando home. She and her 2-year-old son have sensitive skin and, for now, "can't even go outside."

Bailey said it's worse than that. Mosquitoes have been getting inside her Orlando house and biting her son.

State officials have been urging people across Florida to protect themselves against mosquitoes. A boy died of Eastern equine encephalitis last month in Okaloosa County, and the West Nile strain of encephalitis has been found in dead birds in the Panhandle.

"It's really kind of scary. You hear about the birds," Bailey said.

Bailey is making her own nontoxic spray because her son is always putting his hands in his mouth. That makes her reluctant to put harsh chemicals on him.

She saw a recipe for a homemade spray on a TV show: an equal combination of apple cider vinegar, witch hazel and citronella. She finally found the last ingredient at Chamberlin's.

While most people buy ready-made protective sprays and lotions, doing it yourself is often the method of choice for yard applications. Home Depot has been selling bottle after bottle of Permethrin yard spray as well as many foggers.

Other people are turning to gardening catalogs. Orlando resident Patrick Sewell said he likes to buy Bite Blocker lotion by catalog because the product is all natural.

Mosquitoes are worse than they have been in years, said Frank Clarke, a regional sales manager for Clarke Environmental Mosquito Management in Kissimmee.

"[It's] caused, oddly enough, by the drought, as the ponds and lakes dried up and a number of mosquitoes laid eggs in the dry flood plain," Clarke said.

"There's more rain [now] and rain creates mosquitoes."

Clarke's company sprays residential yards, golf courses and the Disney community of Celebration.